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As we seek to understand the implications of God's call to holiness for our lives, we must maintain the priority of our union with Christ. "We love because he first loved us," John tells us (1 John 4:19). The entire biblical narrative of God's covenant-making with his people reveals that it is only in loving response to what God has done that we lead holy lives. Indeed, the very possibility of holiness exists only by virtue of God's gracious, saving initiative in human life and history. Our response to God's initiative is grounded and established in the perfect holiness that is already ours in Jesus Christ. Anything short of this understanding will collapse back into the notion that holiness is our doing, rather than God's. But when this priority is maintained, it provides an unshakeable foundation upon which our faltering attempts to lead holy lives may be rooted and established.

Still, as we maintain the priority of our union with God in Christ, we must also acknowledge that we are not yet holy. For our holy relationship with God in Christ requires of us—or better yet, enables in us—a response. "I urge you," says Paul, "to live a life worthy of the calling you have received" (Eph. 4:1); and, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God" (Rom. 12:1); and finally, "Continue to work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:12-13).

Such passages make clear that there is no place for cheap grace in the economy of God. Rather, the purpose of God's saving work in Christ is to free us to live out the holiness we already enjoy in him. The wonder and beauty of the gospel is that God deigns to manifest his love and goodness through creatures created in his image. By virtue of God's gracious initiative and through union with Christ, we participate in God's holiness in a way that transforms our lives and manifests God's grace: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Eph. 2:10).

Contrary, then, to any notion of mere moral conformity, true holiness is a grateful collaboration with God in seeking to live out the form of human life that he intends.

With these thoughts in mind, we begin to see how much more God is asking of us than mere morality. As long as our notions of holiness are limited to doing certain things and not doing other things, we can go through our entire lives obeying the rules (or at least maintaining the appearance of doing so) without dealing with far more fundamental questions: Whose are we? To whom do we give our first love and loyalty?

At bottom, God's call to be holy is a radical, all-encompassing claim on our lives, our loves, and our very identities. To be a disciple of Jesus Christ requires nothing less than death to our fallen, egocentric selves in order that we might live in and for him. "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it," says Jesus, "but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:35-36).

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5